J effects mean a likely change of government

It is looking likely we will have a change of government this year, due to several ‘J effects’.

The ‘Jacinda effect’ has been talked about a lot. Jacinda Ardern has certainly turned around Labour’s chances a lot.

At the end of July Labour were diving in the polls and looked likely to drop below 20%. Andrew Little stepped down, Jacinda Ardern stepped up and did very well, aided by a helpful and excited and media.

The Jacinda Effect has kept working since then, but there have been two other J effects that have helped.

The Jaded Effect is something every third term government needs to try to overcome and National arn’t managing that. Bill English has campaigned and debated fairly well but Ardern is now hammering him over things National hasn’t ‘fixed’ over the last 9 years, particularly housing and ‘poverty’. It’s difficult to combat that.

The Joyce Effect is also proving to be a major problem for National. Steven Joyce is National’s campaign manager, and National’s campaign has been poor.

On top of that, this week Joyce launched an attack on a claimed $11b fiscal hole in Labour’s economic policy, and this has been a disaster for Joyce, and has made things very awkward for English.

As a result Labour is doing far better than expected, and National is struggling.

It isn’t all over yet, with two weeks of campaign to go, but advance voting begins next week.

Labour have been ahead in the last two Colmar Brunton polls, 43-41 last week and 43-39 this week. That’s an ominous warning sign for National.

It’s not all that bad – last week’s Reid Research poll had National still slightly ahead, and reports both last week and this week say that internal polling has National slightly ahead as well.

It’s not all over yet for National, but it looks difficult for them from here. Not only are they falling in the polls, they are risk at not even making the coalition negotiations with NZ First support, if Winston Peters decides to talk to them.

There are reports that Labour Maori MPs don’t want to work with the Maori Party, who otherwise seem to prefer siding with Labour, so this could make things difficult for Labour. But Labour have positive momentum and they have more options than National now.

The J effects make it likely we will have a change of government soon.

artcroft

Blazer

Joyce has been caught swimming naked…when the tide went out.Exposed as having a degree in Zoology,flunking economics and making a complete fool of himself regarding his $11 billion hole debacle….who can trust him to be …minister of Finance.?

PDB

Wikipedia: “Robertson attended King’s High School in Dunedin, where he was head boy. He later studied political studies at the University of Otago, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with honours in 1995. His honours dissertation studied the restructuring of the New Zealand University Students’ Association in the 1980s.Robertson served as President of the Otago University Students’ Association in 1993 and as Co-President of the New Zealand University Students’ Association in 1996.”

Joyce: “After leaving university Joyce and a group of friends (including radio presenter Jeremy Corbett) started their own radio station, Energy FM, in New Plymouth. With business partners, he built up RadioWorks over the next seventeen years, both organically and by acquisition, to a network of 22 radio stations and 650 staff. He retired as Managing Director of RadioWorks in April 2001, when CanWest purchased it, Joyce receiving $6 million for the sale.”

So Robertson is a political/student association flunky with a Bachelor of Arts whilst Joyce created from scratch his own radio network over 17 years which personally netted him $6 million when sold & was also heavily involved in New Zealand’s economic rise out of the Global financial crisis/earthquakes.

Joe Bloggs

It’s not looking crash-hot for Bill English. After leading the Nats to a stunning defeat in 2002, it looks as if he’s about to lose the unloseable election to a neophyte Labour leader barely 5 weeks into the job.

So is it time to start speculating on how violent the Nats Night-of-the-Long-Knives will be after the election?

PDB

This isn’t true – the Labour/Green vote has always been within touching distance of National (around 40% to Nationals 44%) even when Labour was at it’s lowest point where they simply swapped votes with the Greens. No govt going for a fourth term would consider it a slam dunk, especially one that had fairly recently lost its highly popular leader who was a major reason for them winning the previous three elections. At best English would have still been at the mercy of what Winston decided post-election.

If National do end up in opposition I think the problem will go back to there being no real leadership options except for English when Key left. National would have looked far more formidable with English remaining as the finance minister and if someone fresh & new had become leader. This leadership void for National will be a major issue when English hangs up his boots, especially if some of the ‘old hands’ decide to hang in there (rather than go as the should) and make a push for the leadership role.